After weeks of rambling, finally I manage to put some hours to finish off the long awaited second Terapad template “Space Flare”. Just like the previous one this is also licensed under CC-GNU GPL licence (Creative Commons GNU GPL). Means do whatever you want to do with this; just don’t use it for commercial purposes. “Space Flare” is a theme motivated by space exploration, so it will be best suited for astronomy, science, SciFi or space related blog. It’s 100% free, current version 1.2b. Any query or support related to this template must be through this posts comment …

Doesn’t matter you are just a high school grad student or high flying professional , you need to collaborate with your friends and colleague, time such it is. Though for friendly chit-chat and sharing resource and information social networks like Facebook should be more than enough. But when it comes to professional/business collaboration, the hunts for collaboration software/system begin. In case you are wondering, Collaborative software is the basis for computer supported cooperative workspace, in easy words the software/system that create a virtual office. This is also known as GroupWare. GroupWare have its own classifications on the basis of the …

Got knack for video editing or just need a professional video editing solution for your video production? Then you got to love this Premiere Pro Creative Suite 3  (sponsored link). A bit pricey but worth every penny you spend for  it.With this piece of extraordinary application, even a newbie can do video editing on the fly (Learning curves are higher for advance video editing features). So here is an overview of what this app can bring you-Cross Platform The Premiere Pro CS3, a completely re-written and supercharged …

Sorry for the recent delay in posting. Tied up with so many things, that hardly had time to put together something useful. Another reason was updating the WordPress to latest 2.2.1, as 2.2 have some bugs that prevent/give issues while posting from desktop blog editors. Glad that problem has been resolved.
So this quick post to give head start on upcoming featured articles/postings/Projects:

New Terapad Template/Theme (Will be available for download during weekend)Version 1 will come up later today.
New WordPress Theme (Will be available on Sunday,late Wednesday).
Flex Tutorial Session Three (Saturday)Still working on …

This is the second session in the flex tutorial series. In “Flex 101: Knowing Flex” we just get to know Flex a bit closely. In this session we will focus on MXML basics, which is the key to any Flex application development.

As you already know, MXML is a kind of XML markup language, which only used in Flex especially for layout user interface components.

MXML vs. HTML

Though for a new bi it may be hard to grasp, but honestly MXML isn’t so different than HTML. Just like HTML, MXML provides tags that define user interfaces. But MXML provides a much richer tag set, such as-data grids, data binding, trees, tab navigators, accordions, menus, animation effects etc. Not only that you will be even able to extend MXML with custom components (MXML + ActionScript) that you reference as MXML tags. The biggest difference between HTML and MXML is the outcome, the MXML defined applications are compiled into SWF (Flash file) files and rendered by Flash Player which you got to admit much more rich and dynamic than HTML.

MXML coding

You are a developer or not, you should know by now, every markup language follow their own coding standard, MXML isn’t different at all. Since it is a variant of XML markup language, you will find a lot of similarities. So let’s start with a simple MXML file and explaining the parts of it.
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>

<mx:Application xmlns:mx=”http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml”>

<mx:Label text=”Hello World!” fontWeight=”bold” fontSize=”24″ />

</mx:Application>

This is an example of simple MXML file, to display “Hello World”. Note that the first line of the MXML file specifies an optional declaration of the XML version.
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>

In previous -Must have Firefox add-on series, we talked about three finest add-ons that make browsing a lot easier. This time our focus will be the add-ons that can extend your browser’s capability beyond usual. This add-ons or extensions are equally valuable to students as well as business users. DownThemAll! Not every Internet surfer in the world has high speed connection, and mostly they use some kind of download manager or accelerator to …

There are plenty of Flex tutorials out there, still why another one? Simple in my opinion most of the Flex tutorial I came across with goes too deep/complex without creating a base of understanding. Flex isn’t HTML  that you can just learn it through so called -Dumb guide to Flex. To be able to use full potential of Flex you should be known to one or more of these- PHP, ASP,JSP, CSS, XML etc. No need to be master of those but at least familiar with them makes Flex application …

As a developer I naturally lean towards Firefox when it comes to browser choice. But Opera 9.2 Web browser is something to take note of, you have to like it regardless of your open source love or hate. Opera 9.2 is a cross platform browser. You will be shocked, if I say Opera 9.2 supports almost all the popular OS, which are not supported by IE or FF. Opera 9.2 is compatible with- Windows, Solaris Sparc, Solaris Intel, QNX, OS/2, MacOS, Linux Sparc, Linux PowerPC, Linux i386, FreeBSD i386, BeOS. You got to admit that’s a long list of compatibility. The key features of Opera 9.2- Speed Dial The coolest and unique feature of Opera 9.2 is Speed Dial. So what does this Speed Dial do? As the name suggests, it gives you quick access to your favorite/frequently visited sites via keyboard shortcuts or thumbnail click. Speed Dial appears in any new tabbed window you create in Opera. It’s a new way to provide users with quick access to favorite Web sites when a new tab is opened. The new window features nine thumbnails for Web sites you visit frequently. Clicking on any of the thumbnails causes Opera to show you the full Web page. Alternatively, you can open pages by pressing Ctrl+1 through 9. Say it isn’t cool enough? There are more in Opera 9.2, read on. (Click on thumbnail to see larger image).

Apple’s Safari may be the rocking browser for Mac users, but only 4.04 percent Internet surfer use Safari while Firefox 2.x takes the third spot with 10.02 percent and IE7 occupy spot two followed by its predecessor IE6 at the top with a blistering 46.76 percent share (Statistics provided by Net Applications ). Even the web developers using Mac doesn’t hassle to check if their pages work with Safari unless their target market is particularly Mac oriented. So as you can see Safari remains as an underdog in browser war. Only Mac users were in love with it, deducting those …

Last month (I.e. May 2007) Microsoft announced Expression Suit and Silverlight, which will be competing (most probably) with Adobe’s creative suite and Flash. Though I still noticed flash in Microsoft’s site :P. Microsoft is quietly putting the moves on Adobe’s other popular consumer technology, the Portable Document Format (PDF). XML Paper Specification, or XPS — Microsoft’s new rival to PDF — the Redmond company is making the software for free to both consumers and pros. The rivalry didn’t stop there. Adobe’s Acrobat Connect …